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Haunch of Venison

A roasted haunch of venison wrapped in dough, served with gravy and hot port wine or currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and port wine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 239 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Haunch of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop off the shank of the venison and remove the skin, leaving the fat.

  2. Place the venison on a spit.

  3. Make a dough with flour and water.

  4. Roll the dough out to match the shape of the venison and cover it thickly.

  5. Secure the dough with paper and packthread.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the venison at a distance from the fire, basting often.

  2. A quarter of an hour before serving, remove the dough cover.

  3. Dust the venison with flour, baste with butter, and sprinkle with salt.

  4. When browned, remove from the spit and place on a dish with gravy underneath.

  5. Garnish the bone with cut paper and serve with hot port wine or currant jelly.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Flour + port winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,167 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Venison
Forms the main body of the roast, with its fat adding moisture and flavour as it cooks.
Flour
Makes the protective dough crust and, dusted on the surface, helps the venison brown.
Butter
Used for basting, it adds fat to the surface, promoting browning and a rich flavour.
Port wine or currant jelly
Serving accompaniment that adds sweetness and acidity to balance the rich meat.

The step that matters

Dusting with flour and basting with butter after the dough is removed. Once the dough cover comes off, the bare surface must brown evenly. Flour and butter help create that browned crust, but without regular basting it can dry out or scorch unevenly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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